March 3

Today is Mother’s Day in Georgia — the country, not the state.

Perhaps the most famous of all Georgian mothers was Katerina Geladze Djugashvili.

(Katerina Geladze)

The daughter of serfs, Katerina married at age 17. She had two children—Mikhail and Georgi—who died as babies, before her third, Josef (nickname Soso), was born. A devout Christian, Katerina made a vow to God. If this boy would survive, he would become a servant of the Lord.

Soso did live, but was often ill. Katerina nursed him to health through small pox, endless colds and coughs, and a case of blood poisoning that left one of his arms permanently injured.

Soso’s father was a drunk who habitually abused his wife and son. He walked out on them to work at a shoe factory in the city, where he eventually drank himself to death.

(Young Soso)

Katerina worked as a laundress and servant to raise money for her son to attend the Gori Parochial School. Though other boys picked on him for his ragged clothes, pockmarked face and hick accent, the boy graduated at the top of his class, and was accepted to the prestigious Tiflis Theological Seminary.

“To the Most Reverend Archemandrite Seraphim, Rector and Father,” wrote the boy…

Soso sang in the school choir, read voraciously, and began writing poetry:

“To the Moon” Move on, O tireless one– Never bowing your head, Scatter the misty clouds, Great is the providence of the Almighty Smile tenderly upon the earth Which lies outspread beneath you… And know that he who fell like ashes to the earth, Who long ago became enslaved, Will rise again higher than the holy mountain… O beauty, you shone among the heavens So now let your rays play in splendor In the blue sky I shall rip open my shirt And bare my breast to the moon, And with outstretched hands Worship her who showers her light on the world.

It was Soso’s appetite for reading that got him expelled just before graduation. He was caught with banned literature, including works by Darwin and Victor Hugo. His mother’s dreams were dashed to pieces.

Decades later, after Josef changed his last name to Stalin (much easier to pronounce than Djugashvili) and became the leader of the Soviet Union, he tried to explain to his mother what he did for a living—leaving out all that paranoid, mass-murdering, genocidal dictator stuff.

Unencumbered with checks and balances like U.S. Presidents, Stalin was at the time the single most powerful person in the world.

Katerina simply told him, like any good mother, she was disappointed he wasn’t a priest.